At 12:33 PM 23-10-96 -0400, Robert Laughlin wrote:

As one who is living this senerio on a daily basis, I can tell you it's frustrating and upsetting.

Actually, peering requirements today are the first effective barrier to entry into the ISP business that have been successfully realized and I don't mean that in a restraint of trade sense. CIX settlements didn't do the trick and NAP fees didn't either. :-) But the cost of peering today makes transit look reasonable in many more cases. I sympathize with your frustration and with the frustration of the large ISPs in dealing with the huge caseloads of peering requests.

The model that makes sense to me, is for the largest networks to exchange traffic through private interconnects, and for them to treat the aggregated NAP traffic as another large ISP. The NAP is then used for the 2nd tier and smaller providers to exchange traffic with each other, as well as a collection point to gather up traffic for the large networks.

Well, yes, but what if the large players satisfied their need to interconnect with their largest peers at private interconnects? What would be their motivation to maintain good connectivity and good routing to the open interconnects? I think their enthusiasm for maintaining good connectivity to the open interconnects might wane, much as their enthusiasm for CIX with its mandated peering has waned. The disappearance (more accurately, the crippling) of the open interconnects will mean the barrier to entry will become truly awesome, something like a dozen private DS-3 interconnects to get full routing. --Kent speaking as the PacBell NAP technical consultant ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~ Kent W. England Six Sigma Networks 1655 Landquist Drive, Suite 100 Voice/Fax: 619.632.8400 Encinitas, CA 92024 kwe@6SigmaNets.com Experienced Internet Consulting ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~